Grading PoltiFact: Jon Kyl and Planned Parenthood's abortions

We don’t check opinions, and we recognize that in the world of speechmaking and political rhetoric, there is license for hyperbole.
--Principles of PolitiFact and the Truth-O-Meter

The issue:

The fact checkers:

Louis Jacobson:  writer, researcher
Bill Adair:  editor


Analysis:

I can't recall any examples where PolitiFact graded "true" an example of hyperbole.  It may have happened.  I may have even read the story.  But I don't remember it if I did.   On with the show that is PolitiFact's treatment of a statement by Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.):

Here’s a portion of what Kyl said on the floor:

"Everybody goes to clinics, to hospitals, to doctors, and so on. Some people go to Planned Parenthood. But you don’t have to go to Planned Parenthood to get your cholesterol or your blood pressure checked. If you want an abortion, you go to Planned Parenthood, and that’s well over 90 percent of what Planned Parenthood does."

We got many requests to fact-check his statement.

Bonus points to my gentle readers if they recall my critique of PolitiFact's selection process for allowing readers to determine which statements receive a fact check.  As I've said subsequently, PolitiFact's policies are a recipe for selection bias.  Sen. Kyl made a series of factual claims, any of which might have served as subject matter for fact checkers.  Yet the evidence suggests that the clamoring of readers directly led to this fact check.  What is that evidence?  Same day service!  Kyl made his statement late Friday morning, a little after 11 a.m.   PolitiFact published online just after 6 p.m.  That's a very rapid turnaround by PolitiFact standards.  Fact checks ordinarily take days.

Why the rush?  We'll look for clues in the story.

PolitiFact:

Planned Parenthood says the statistics are dramatically different -- that 90 percent of its services are preventive in nature, compared with 3 percent that are abortion-related.

The story goes on to transmit, in brief, Planned Parenthood's account of its services followed by an assessment:

We should note a few caveats.

First, we think many people would acknowledge a difference between providing an abortion and, say, handing out a pack of condoms or conducting a blood test. The former is a significant surgical procedure, whereas the latter are quick and inexpensive services. So Planned Parenthood’s use of "services" as its yardstick likely decreases abortion’s prominence compared to what other measurements would show. Using dollars spent or hours devoted to patient care would likely put abortion above 3 percent in the calculations.

Second, it’s worth noting that Planned Parenthood self-reported these numbers, although the group says each affiliate’s numbers are independently audited. (There is no single, national audit.) So we have no choice but to accept their accuracy more or less on faith.

Still, even with those caveats, we do think that Kyl has vastly overstated the share of abortions.

That, ladies and gentlemen, pretty much finishes the fact checking.  PolitiFact accepts the accuracy of Planned Parenthood's numbers "more or less on faith."  And that faith is based, in part, on the government audit system.  As I pointed out during a past review of PolitiFact, the government audit system is far from foolproof.

On the one hand we have an appalling degree of credulity exhibited by the fact check team.  On the other hand, is there any way at all to reconcile Kyl's statement with a sober assessment of Planned Parenthood's numbers?

A potential explanation came down the pipe around 3 p.m. on Friday:

We checked with Kyl’s office but did not hear back. However, a few hours after the speech, CNN anchor T.J. Holmes told viewers that the network had received a statement from Kyl’s office saying that the senator’s remark "was not intended to be a factual statement but rather to illustrate that Planned Parenthood, an organization that receives millions in taxpayer dollars, does subsidize abortions."

The explanation from Kyl's office is the definition of hyperbole.  But PolitiFact ignores the interpretation of Kyl's statement as hyperbole, as the next paragraph shows:

The statistics from Planned Parenthood and the statement from Kyl's office make it clear that he erred by saying abortion counts for well over 90 percent of the group's services. We find his claim False.

Hyperbole is not an error.  It is a deliberate figure of speech.  In the best examples, the audience has little doubt that the speaker expects them to discount the literal numbers in favor of the underlying point.  Kyl's statement was arguably a maladroit attempt at hyperbole, perhaps to the point of suggesting that the explanation was an ad hoc justification.  But is the fact check fair if what might serve as an exculpatory explanation is taken instead as a confession of wrongdoing?  And is PolitiFact's claim of allowing license for hyperbole plausible in light of a case like this one?

PolitiFact appears to have placed itself at the disposal of news activists as a media marionette.  Consider the credulity required to overlook the following in Planned Parenthood's data (click image for enlarged view):

Note the  "Reversible Contraception Clients, Women**" with the associated number of services, 2,327,662.

Follow the asterisks:

Third down in the column:  "No method," with 10.5 percent of the reversible contraceptive services falling in that category.  I think if I had an interview with a Planned Parenthood spokesperson it might occur to me to ask in what sense "No Method" of birth control reasonably represents a service provided by Planned Parenthood.  And I'd be looking for an explanation of "Other/Unknown" (8.1 percent of reversible contraceptive services).  Planned Parenthood doesn't know what service it has provided as much as 8.1 percent of the time?

These are not small numbers.  "No method" accounts for about 2 percent of Planned Parenthood services compared to the 3 percent supposedly accounted for by abortion-related services.  And "Other/Unknown" accounts for another 189,000 services.

It might occur to a journalist that the Planned Parenthood numbers show some fairly obvious evidence of padding even aside from the dubious practice of weighting all services evenly regardless of cost (find an unfriendly interpretation here).

This is the shoddiest sort of journalism.  The attempt to check the facts was cursory at best.  PolitiFact again belied its claim of allowing license for hyperbole, in this case apparently not even giving serious consideration to the possibility Kyl was employing hyperbole.

Is literally 90 percent plus of Planned Parenthood's business abortion?  Certainly not, but the unfriendly estimates figure that it accounts for about a third of Planned Parenthood's revenue, a fact certainly under-emphasized by Planned Parenthood's numbers.  As hyperbole, Kyl's point was fair but potentially misleading.

Why the rush?  The best explanation for the urgency of this item seems to come from ideology.  It was important to PolitiFact to publish prior to the final negotiations over the government shutdown.

The grades:

Louis Jacobson:  F
Bill Adair:  F

Afters:

Looks like a new feature for CSPAN video embeds--the ability to customize the beginning and end of the video.  So I'm giving it a try for the Kyl clip:



I'd have like better precision in choosing the start and end times, though that may be achievable using the html code.



April 14, 2011:  Replaced "PolitiFact's" with "Planned Parenthood's" in the next-to-last paragraph prior to the grades.  PolitiFact, so far as I know, does not abort human embryos or fetuses at all.  Hat tip to JD for catching the error for me.
April 26, 2011: Excised a pair of grammatically criminal commas.